BCFED Young Workers’ School at Camp Jubilee

Section 11

Member Photo Contest

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Message from the President

Earlier this spring, teachers from several states in the United States walked out of classrooms and onto picket lines. In Arizona, teachers voted to strike for the first time. Teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucy took to picket lines. Colorado is the most recent state to experience picket lines. There is a growing movement in the United States of educators demanding better pay and increased funding for schools.

The strikes and walkouts are leading to substantial wage increases. In West Virginia, teachers and other state employees received a 5 per cent raise. In Colorado, teachers are fighting for increased classroom funding.

A recent US poll found that most Americans agree that teachers are underpaid, and over half support striking as a strategy to change the pay imbalance. Even more surprising is that over half of the respondents were willing to pay more taxes to fund schools and pay teachers more.

Here in BC, we’re embarking on a new round of public sector bargaining. Ninety-two per cent of PEA members bargain under the public sector mandate. Other unions, including the BCGEU, are already at the bargaining table and looking to recoup for the years of losses they have experienced.

At the PEA, we’re interested in how these early negotiations in BC proceed. We’re not presupposing that our members will take to the streets like teachers in the United States. We do want to learn from the successes of our southern allies in swaying popular opinion in favour of adequate funding and wages for public servants.

Our staff are working with the BCFED to develop messages that resonate with the public. We’re hoping this round of bargaining will bring a correction towards adequately funded public services and fair and reasonable wages and benefits for our members.

Frank Kohlberger

Modernizing BC Agriculture

Agrologists working for the BC Public Service are shaping how agriculture in BC can grow the economy

Words Jessica Natale Woollard

Photos Melissa Voth McHugh

The modern apple orchards of the Okanagan don’t look like the orchards of old. Instead of fields of big, wide trees with lots of room between them, the trees grow densely in tight rows like hedgerows. They are narrow and not much taller than the pickers, who can easily reach the dozens of red- and yellow-marbled fruit the trees bear in abundance.

Instead of producing 25 bins to the acre of apples, new orchards produce 70 bins, says Carl Withler, a treefruit and grape industry specialist with the Ministry of Agriculture’s Sector Development Branch in Kelowna.

Planting these new orchards is costly, but “it pays off,” he says. “Where you might get 12 cents a pound for older varieties of apples like Macs, you’ll get 43 or 47 cents a pound for Ambrosias or Honeycrisps.”

Part of Withler’s role is to encourage farmers in BC to move away from less profitable varieties of treefruit and grapes in favour of more profitable ones. He is the ministry’s representative on the $1.5 million per year Treefruit Replant program.

“Think of a Mac apple,” he explains, referring to the red and green McIntosh apple Canada has been known for since the nineteenth century. “It’s fantastic when you pick it off a tree. When you bite into it, juice drips down your face. After a month, it goes punk and soft; it browns and bruises easily. Newer varieties, Ambrosias for example, they’re crisp off the tree. You can keep them in cold storage. And they taste almost exactly the same months later.” And, people will pay a premium price for them, which is good for farmers and the economy.

Apples aren’t the only fruit in Withler’s portfolio; he also leads the export program for the millions of BC cherries sold into California each year and works with grapes in BC’s thriving wine industry.

Withler knows his job sounds romantic: walking through orchards, shiny red apples peeking out from behind green leaves, or inspecting firm grapes destined to be crushed into wine. The reality is that most of his work these days is administrative, but every once in a while he has what he calls a “golden day,” when he gets to walk through the orchards of fruit trees.

In the Field

Moving into an administrative role is a natural evolution after more than 30 years in the industry, Withler says. His early years with the BC government were high action and spent in the field. He started as a summer student with the Ministry of Agriculture in 1984. One day, he was out in the field when he saw “a great big pencil of black smoke.” It was a forest fire. “I thought, I’ll be darned, I want to be a fire fighter.”

For the next two summers, he worked as an initial attack crewman and later a crew leader for the Ministry of Forests. For the next decade, he continued to fight fires part time while he worked full time with the Ministry of Forests, first in Alexis Creek and then in 100 Mile House and Grand Forks.

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

Withler credits his dad with inspiring his career path.

Ira Withler was a long-time regional manager with the Ministry of Environment. A fisheries biologist, he earned a master’s degree in natural resource management from Michigan State University in the early ’70s, taking his family, including five-year-old Carl, born in Victoria, to the United States for a few years before settling in Williams Lake.

“I travelled around with my dad for his work. We went to Bella Coola, Anahim Lake, 100 Mile House, all over the place. I listened to him and learned about his work, and it really influenced what I wanted to do,” Withler says. “I knew I wanted to work outside in some sort of natural resource field, but I didn’t know what it was.”

When it came time to choose a course of study, he left it up to providence—and the alphabet. He opened the University of British Columbia’s course calendar and went down the list, stopping at the first program with an outdoor component that he had the prerequisites for. The winner was agriculture, in the bachelor of science program.

“I might have been a forester if the alphabet started with F,” he jokes.

After graduating in 1988, he became a professional agrologist, a designation obtained through articling and gaining experience in the field. Range agrologists in the forest ministry develop management plans to protect the province’s rangelands, a vital source of food for grazing cattle and ungulates. Business owners in the cattle industry can apply for tenures and permits to have their cattle graze on Crown land. Range agrologists ensure the land is foraged in a sustainable way to protect the environment.

The career proved a great fit for Withler. “You get to deal with the ranching community, you get to be outside, you get to make some decisions along the way, you get to run projects. It was exciting and fun.”

Eventually, he took a position in Grand Forks as a range officer, where he stayed for 17 years. At one point, his position was split between range officer and recreation officer, as he became involved in improving rustic campsites and forestland trails.

Being a recreation officer was another romantic title, says Withler, who snowboards and mountain bikes in his spare time, as well as coaching his teenage sons’ soccer teams.

In 2003, Withler’s Grand Forks office was closed, leaving 43 employees out of work. Withler and his wife had just built a new house and had the first of their two sons, but they had to leave the community to find work elsewhere.

Withler was hired as a regional agrologist with the Ministry of Agriculture in Kelowna, the position he held until moving into the treefruits and grape specialist position, which he plans to stay in until retirement.

Giving Back

A member of the PEA since the early days of his career, Withler became active in the union in order to give back to an association that “has been good to me.”

For more than 10 years, he has been a local rep, and he recently ended four years as the chair of the Government Licensed Professionals chapter of more than 1,200 foresters, engineers, agrologists, geoscientists, psychologists and more.

He has a strong belief in equality, which made participating in the PEA a natural role for him. “As I worked through my career, I could see there were pretty significant inequities in hiring practices that concerned me,” he explains, adding that he “was—and am—quite concerned for the wage scale for PEA and GLP members.”

He appreciates the training opportunities offered by the PEA and has attended union conferences to further his education around labour.

Land, Food, Economy

Reflecting on his work these last few years, Withler says the connection between land, food and the BC economy fascinates him. “To be able to source food locally is a neat thing,” he remarks.

He and his wife’s family have owned an orchard in Osoyoos for 25 years, where they grow peaches in the backyard, raise rabbits, buy pears from a friend and buy locally raised beef and lamb.

“I think that people undervalue what agriculture does for this province,” he says. “Every year, in the Okanagan and Creston, we produce about $83 million of cherries and $200 million in apples. We export them around world, from Singapore to Berlin and all points in between. All that money comes back to the province of British Columbia, and we sprinkle it up and down the Okanagan and the Creston Valley. It happens year after year, and it’s expanding.”

He says Williams Lake has small plantings of apples and peaches, and the Thompson River drainage will be home to 200 acres of cherries starting in 2018. Not too long ago, those regions did not seem like they’d be part of the modern BC treefruit industry.

“It’s really neat to see. I hope agriculture continues to seek out opportunities to produce food for the province of BC and around the world,” he says.

Even after 34 years, Withler’s enthusiasm for his work is unmistakable. “It’s been a good career, trying to do good things for the people and the province.”

Local Rep Training

On May 14 and 15, 2018, six local reps came together in Victoria, BC for a session of advanced Local Rep Training.

This course builds on the skills learned in the basic level session and focusses on human rights, the basics of organizing and communication with members, and more.

Making Your Union Stronger

Highlights from the 2018 Education Conference in Victoria

Words Brett Harper

Photos Aaron Lutsch

“Don’t be afraid to rock the boat,” said Claire Marchant of the Law Society Lawyers chapter. She had just described her role in filing a freedom of information request to the Law Society for information about how bonuses were being awarded in her chapter. The chapter executive wanted to find out whether this was being done equitably. After receiving the information, she discovered that there were significant discrepancies between the lawyers and the management in terms of who was awarded a bonus.

This was just one of the stories highlighted during the PEA’s 2018 Education Conference. Across a number of chapters, members shared their stories of a time when they faced challenges as a PEA member and how they worked to overcome it.

Frank Kohlberger, Sheldon Martell and Elizabeth Hunt spoke about an incident in the early 2000s when the provincial government introduced legislation to merge the GLP chapter into the BCGEU. “The legislation was going to amend the Public Service Labour Relations Act, which defines that the professionals can be in a different union than the rest of the unionized employees in the government,” said Kohlberger.

“I was one of the rank and file,” Hunt said. “I wasn’t really paying attention until this came across my desk,” she added. “I was annoyed; I felt like we were the little fish being swallowed up by the BCGEU, because we were only 1,200 strong and they were thousands strong.”

Kohlberger was on the PEA executive at the time. “It got to the point where we were only a couple of days before the House was going to debate this piece of legislation... we put a call out to all members to write and/or talk to their MLAs.” Within a few days, Kohlberger said, the MLAs were inundated with letters, comments and calls from members expressing their concerns.

“So, I immediately started a letter to my local MLA, to tell him about how upset I was,” Hunt said. Her MLA responded quickly and scheduled a meeting with her. “When I met with him later, he told me that he went and challenged the minister who was proposing this in the House.” The legislation never reached third reading and the GLP members remained a part of the PEA.

Other delegates shared stories about difficult rounds of bargaining, the push for gender-based pay equity and raids by outside unions. The stories were an opportunity for delegates to reach into the past and recognize the challenges we have faced as well as the positive outcomes that resulted from difficult circumstances.

BCFED

Irene Lanzinger, president of the BC Federation of Labour, welcomed delegates to the conference and reported on various issues the BCFED is working on. One priority for the BCFED, she said, is to return to the card-check system for workplaces attempting to organize new workers. Under the current model, potential union members must sign a union card and vote later on unionization. This process provides employers time to intimidate workers against unionizing. “We want to prevent employers from interfering in union organizing drives,” said Lanzinger.

Other initiatives the BCFED is pushing hard on include gaining leave for victims of domestic violence, a campaign heralded by the Canadian Labour Congress, as well as reforms to the Workers’ Compensation Board. “It’s a fundamental right to have a safe and healthy workplace,” Lanzinger said.

Lanzinger also celebrated the recent win over the minimum wage rate in BC. The BCFED was a leading voice in the campaign for a $15 minimum wage, an initiative the PEA actively supported. In February this year, the new provincial government announced that the increase would go ahead. Lanzinger applauded the decision, saying, “When we get to $15, hundreds of thousands of workers will be lifted out of poverty.” She also noted her disappointment in the timeline, however, as the minimum wage will not reach $15 an hour until 2021.

Deep Organizing and the March for Science

Over two days, members were led through the organizing process by Anita Zaenker, the BCFED director of organizing, and PEA Labour Relations Officer Sam Montgomery. Members learned the critical steps in the organizing process and listened to successful case studies from the United States.

The organizing sessions culminated with members taking part in the March for Science. The event brought awareness to the need for a strengthened public service and greater investment in scientists in the public service. The march at Centennial Square in Victoria, was one of many March for Science events held across the globe on April 14.

Scott McCannell, the PEA’s executive director, opened the speeches. “Let’s face it,” he said. “Many PEA members love to nerd out on science. That said, they also care deeply about the services they provide and about making sure public policy decisions in British Columbia are based on science, data and facts.” After highlighting the role that PEA members play for the public good, McCannell outlined how years of cutbacks are impacting PEA members in the public sector.

“The last 16 years under the Liberal government have led to extremely challenging circumstances,” McCannell said. “That government decided to cut the number of scientists working directly for the province by 25 per cent in a drive to lower taxes. And in order to accommodate those cuts in the public service, they gutted the laws that regulate natural resource development in BC.”

Highlighting the findings from a recent survey on the effect of the cuts, McCannell said, “Evidence for Democracy surveyed PEA scientists who worked for the province in 2016 and what they found is that 68 per cent of those scientists say that because of the cuts that took place in British Columbia, there aren’t enough resources in government for ministries to meet their statutory mandates.”

Other speakers emphasized challenges caused by the current professional reliance model. “What we have set up here in British Columbia is the classic situation where the fox is guarding the hen house,” said Bob Peart, chair of the Professional Reliance Working Group. “We’ve put qualified professionals into the situation where they have a built-in conflict of interest.”

McCannell left the crowd with a clear call to action. “We need to bring back public policy in BC that reflects science and evidence-based decision making, not decision-based evidence making, as we’ve seen in the course of the last number of years. We’re working with other concerned stakeholders. I would encourage you to look at whodecides.ca. Now is the time to learn about these issues and make your voice heard.”

After the speeches wrapped up, around two hundred people (including 60 PEA members and staff) marched to the Legislature.

March for Science

The March for Science, held at Centennial Square in Victoria, was one of many marches held across the globe on April 14. The event brought awareness to the need for a strengthened public service and greater investment in scientists in the public service.

"What we have set up here in British Columbia is the classic situation where the fox is guarding the hen house,” said Bob Peart, chair of the Professional Reliance Working Group. “We’ve put qualified professionals into the situation where they have a built-in conflict of interest.

60 PEA members and staff participated in the event, which followed the 2018 PEA Education Conference.

Without Working People, We Wouldn't Have BC

On the Line Tracks BC Labour History

Words Jackie Wong

We live in fast times. Hyper-connected and always on, it is easy for us to forget those whose struggles and resistance paved the way for the rights and privileges we enjoy today. Since its founding in 2004, the BC Labour Heritage Centre Society has existed to preserve, document and amplify working people’s contributions to life in British Columbia, people whose work often goes unacknowledged.

“Working people are left out of a lot of our histories,” says Ken Novakowski, chair of the BC Labour Heritage Centre’s board of directors. “Our streets, our bridges—everything is named after entrepreneurs or politicians. Very rarely are they named after working people. The Ironworkers Bridge here in Vancouver is an exception, but mostly, working people and people who were their leaders are ignored in recognition.”

Novakowski is a former high school social studies teacher and the former president and executive director of the BC Teachers Federation. Five years ago, he and his colleagues at the BC Labour Heritage Centre embarked on a project to create a comprehensive book-length history of BC’s labour movement. Novakowski diligently read five drafts of the resulting book, On the Line: A History of the British Columbia Labour Movement, released this spring by Harbour Publishing. Authored by journalist and noted labour reporter Rod Mickelburgh, the book is the first of its kind since 1967 to offer a full-spectrum history of BC’s labour movement.

“We wanted it to be a book that working people could read and see themselves in,” says Novakowski. Without working people, he adds, “We wouldn’t have the BC we have today, whether it’s in the forests, in the mines, in the fishery, in the school and the hospital. It’s working people that together built this province and gave us the standard of living that we enjoy today, through sacrifice and struggle that they made over more than a century.”

The result is a nuanced, gritty telling of the forces that shaped BC.

Propulsive and cinematic, Mickelburgh’s writing breathes life, heart and empathy into some of the most underappreciated elements of BC labour history. This is particularly true of the legislated racism that impacted the livelihoods of Indigenous workers, who were vital contributors to the provincial economy until government policies systematically pushed them out of their jobs near the turn of the 20th century.

“Government policies were put in place to make it exceedingly difficult for Indigenous workers to share in the economy beyond a subsistence living,” Mickelburgh writes. “These policies were deliberate. Few made it clearer than Premier Richard McBride. When whites in Ootsa Lake, calling themselves the “bona fide” settlers, complained in 1909 that too many Indians were being hired for government road work, McBride replied, “Have issued instructions to our officials [that] white settlers must be considered first.” Similar anti-Indigenous measures were applied in occupation after occupation.

While deftly chronicling the hard-won steps towards workplace equity that the labour movement brought forward, Mickelburgh does not gloss over the many concurrent indignities endured by working people of colour. The book demonstrates how employment gains for white women during the Second World War, for example, took place alongside ongoing racism that was both accepted by the wider society and supported by government policy.

“The need for unity to fight a common enemy had done little to stem the racism still permeating British Columbia,” Mickelburgh writes of BC’s wartime climate. “Ethnic Chinese and Nikkei were still barred from most professions, rebuffed when they tried to enlist and remained unable to vote. Far worse was to come.”

The book documents key moments of worker organizing that garnered public support and eventually changed public policy on working conditions, pay, hours and health and safety standards.

Mickelburgh depicts the famous On to Ottawa Trek of 1935 as a defiant uprising of unemployed men that defined and shook up the 10 lost years of the depression. A chapter titled “That Seventies’ Socialism” documents the ferocity of BC’s labour movement of the 1970s.

Coverage of recent victories, like the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2016 decision to order the provincial government to restore contractual class sizes and composition to BC teachers, and the much talked about “Fight for 15” labour-led campaign for a more livable minimum wage, ends the book in the present day.

“The struggle is not over.”

“The thing that I most hope happens is that after reading [the book], people have a greater understanding of how we got to where we are today, and also understand that the struggle is not over,” says the Ken Novakowski.

He commends today’s union leaders for working on the forefront of the fight for structural changes to encourage more participation from people who have been historically underrepresented in the labour movement, including Indigenous people, people of colour and women. This is an incomplete, ongoing process that will require continued solidarity to be realized more fully.

“It’s particularly important at this time to realize that many things are possible, but that they’re only possible if we stand together,” Novakowski says. “And that can be done, because employers, historically, have tried to divide working people along racial lines or gender lines or whatever, with some success. But if we’ve learned anything, we’ve learned that solidarity is critical to achieving goals that we have.”

On the Line is an inspiring testament to how the labour movement exists as an historical and contemporary agent of social change—change “beyond dollars and cents,” writes Mickelburgh. “It will not be easy. It never is for unions.” But the dream of a better society is what keeps the labour movement going, he writes, “long after so many other social movements have passed into the dustbin of history.” •

On the Line: A History of the British Columbia Labour Movement, by Rod Mickelburgh, Harbour Publishing, 2018.

Win a copy of On the Line

Two copies of On the Line are available to be won by PEA members. Submit your name with the subject ‘On the Line’ to PEA membership.

Two winners will be chosen at random. Deadline to apply is July 31, 2018

Message from the Secretary-Treasurer

I’m pleased to present the PEA’s 2017 financial report. This report represents a snapshot of our organization’s financial health. It includes the 2017 audited financial statements and the 2018 budget.

We are a small union with a strong financial balance sheet. Our union accomplishes our mission by funding operations through union dues and the use of investment income. This combination allows us to keep our dues rate low and still meet the needs of our membership. Your PEA executive believes in balancing the use of investment income to fund projects and campaigns and growing our investments.

Financial transparency is key to a democratic and effective union. PEA budgets are reviewed monthly by the Association executive, while the investment-earnings reports—with performance metrics and benchmarks—are reviewed on a quarterly basis. This report is one way we provide our members with information on the internal operations of our union. Members can also review financial statements on our website at pea.org/financials. Convention is another opportunity for members to review the PEA finances. Financial statements are independently audited annually (these are not approved until convention by PEA delegates). This means that the financial statements enclosed are still draft until next spring 2019, when members review, debate and approve them at convention.

Last year, I promised to provide members with more information on how our investment income is managed from an ethical position. The global pressure on the divestment from fossil fuels continues to push the PEA to consider how our own financial investments are managed.

As a union, we focus on how our financial choices impact the community at large. The PEA moved our banking to Vancity in 2013 after the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) began the process of replacing their employees in Toronto with temporary foreign workers. Even though RBC rescinded their decision to lay off workers, we made a move to a worker-friendly financial institution.

We are concerned with how our investments impact the global community. The following policy guides how our investments are managed: “The Committee will minimize, or where practical eliminate, investment in companies that engage in war profiteering, abuse human rights, use exploitive labour practices, contribute to carbon emissions or whose major activity is the production or manufacture of tobacco products.” We work with our investment managers to put the PEA policy into reality.

I would like to thank our financial officer, Marc Joly, for the great work he does of managing the PEA’s finances and for his help with preparing files for the financial audit.

I hope this report shows that our union’s finances are sound and well managed.

BCFED Young Workers’ School at Camp Jubilee

September 14 – 16, 2018

Young workers from around the province will attend courses to help build skills related to the labour movement, political and community organizing, and leadership. Course topics include workplace mental health, an introduction to labour history and leading workshops with confidence. In addition, you can participate in a variety of outdoor activities at a retreat-like environment in Indian Arm, which is only accessible by boat.

The PEA is focused on engaging our young members and developing the PEA leaders of tomorrow and has funded the registration and travel expenses for two young members to attend.

Interested members 30 and under can apply by contacting PEA membership by August 1, 2018. Members will be chosen by random draw. Selected applicants will be interviewed for The Professional.

Member Photo Contest

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In this section

The PEA was formed in 1974, by a group of professionals working in the public sector. The story goes that the founders of the union mortgaged their houses to fund negotiations of the union’s first collective agreement.

Our union is led by the PEA Executive. They represent members from across the chapters of the PEA and set the overall vision and direction for our union.

Resources for our members

Navigating a union can sometime be a challenging process. Under this section of the website you will find resources to help you navigate the PEA. In the members section you'll find expense claim reimbursements, information on the PEA's scholarship and bursary program and our grants and donations program.

Collective bargaining and job action resources explain the process of collective bargaining and what to do in the unlikely event of job action.

Local reps can also find resources to help them complete their job more effectively. This includes ways to welcome new members, how to take notes in investigation disciplinary meetings and more.

The heart of our union

The PEA is made up of nine chapters, or groups of members who either work for the same employer or are in the same field of work. Each chapter has an elected executive tasked with running the affairs of the chapter. Each chapter is entitled to representation at the PEA Executive, the governing body of the union.

Our members work for a range of employers: the Province of BC, the University of Victoria, St. Margaret's School, the Family Maintenance Enforcement Program, the Oil and Gas Commission, the Law Society of BC, Legal Services Society, the Okangan Regional Library and health authorities across BC.

Professionals need unions now more then ever

Since the 1970’s, when the PEA was formed, our mission has been to ensure our members can work in safe, productive environments and receive fair and reasonable wages and benefits for the valuable work they do. We help individuals and groups of professional workers to understand the challenges they face in their workplaces and some of the solutions available to them.

We work with potential members to become certified as a union and achieve the wages, benefits and respect they deserve.

The Professional | Volume 45 Issue 1

The Professional is the PEA's award-winning, quarterly magazine for members.

The January/February 2019 issue includes a profile of SMS member Bev Waterfield